ColorTherapy: Beach Haven

I don't find this room to be column-worthy for its dynamism, but for its subtle arrangement of varying hues. As a color therapist, I'm in Beach Haven heaven...

The wall itself is painted in what I think my mother's generation would call "harvest beige." It's a somewhat conventional golden neutral, but it allows a specific dialogue to occur between the other elements in the room. The colors in the drapes are bold—black and gold with a glimmer of blue—and flow into the cool champagne of the fabric on the sofa by way of the wall color. The photographs pick up on the other tones in the room, and their black frames echo the rhythm of the drapes. If the walls had been painted plain white, or something more random like pale yellow, none of this would occur with the same sensuality.

Although I often try to champion in these pages bold and unusual uses of color, I am equally intrigued by things like this that are softer and so precisely considered. And I can't get enough of the shape of this sofa—in my opinion Modernism never looked so good.